When Congress wouldn't pass a bill, the president had to act on immigration and deportation policy, to keep families intact -- a measure that affected 40 percent of the undocumented immigrants in the United States.

What at first seemed very clear-cut almost instantly became clouded in fog. This fog may clear some when the Army makes a formal statement about the circumstances of Bergdahl's capture by the Taliban, but until that point the speculation is running pretty wild.

With tax policy, federal spending, social insurance, and the national debt ceiling being held hostage by radical right-wing Tea Party demands, it is time for what FDR called "bold, persistent experimentation" and executive action to solve the economic crisis facing the nation.

Do folks like Marco Rubio, Michele Bachmann, war-on-terror architect John Yoo, and columnist Charles Krauthammer really believe the Constitution means one thing when a Republican is in the White House, and something entirely different when the President is a Democrat?

Why take the "chance" by bringing additional Guantanamo detainees to our shores? Because it is essential to our national security that we close it down -- and this step is necessary to make that happen.